Off my ASS for the SSA – FINAL RESULTS!

Wooooo! I can’t believe what mild exercise, eating healthier, and eating less (no, you don’t need three pieces of cake, Jen) can do. I know BMI isn’t a perfect measurement, but as an estimate, today is the first day in years I’ve actually not been considered overweight for my height and age – just hit a BMI of 24.9! Most importantly, I feel better and I fit better in my clothes.

Though enough of all this subjective personal emotions crap – if you’re like me, you want DATA!(click here for larger version)

As you can see, I’ve marked some interesting events that affected my weight. I also should have marked all the events that I thought would affect my weight, but didn’t – two other birthday parties, happy hour every Friday, the Superbowl, Indian food. I guess it just goes to show that an occasional beer or cheat meal won’t completely derail you from your goals.

I also added a trend line because I’m a nerd. For all the fluctuations weight loss entails, I was impressed by the relatively high R squared value. And the equation ends up working out to losing about 1.45 lbs per week. See, I was on a healthy pace!

As for the competition between me and JT… well, he’s actually been pretty sick for the last couple of weeks, so he’s pulled out of the official competition. Doesn’t want me to have to pay up because he’s losing weight from illness. So… I guess by my personal standards, I win for reaching my goal? I guess we’ll just have to buy each other drinks at this weekend’s conference.

And as for the competition between me and Phil…well, I defeated him by a good three pounds ;) Sorry Phil – I know your wife was on Team Jen and potentially sabotaging you with her cooking, but you still have to pay up!

To everyone who’s put up with reading these blog posts, or pledged to donate to the SSA for every pound I lost, thank you! I’m not done yet – I’d like to get close to my high school weight by the AHA conference in April – but I won’t bother you guys with weekly updates.

Thanks again! I’m going to celebrate by falling off the wagon at the SSA SoCal conference this weekend, haha.

Congrats! And there’s nothing like getting sick for rapid weight loss, I feel for JT. A few weeks ago I got some kind of bacterial infection that was causing flu-like symptoms. Lost six pounds in three days. After I got better I made the effort to keep it off… I’m 11lbs away from my goal now. :3

Congrats! I’ve been following along, and I was ahead for a bit, but you beat me by 1.6 pounds. Of course, I’m not attempting to record fractions, I’m lucky if my scale is accurate to within a pound or two.

Whenever I talk to my friends about weight loss or any other kind of behavior I ask, “Are you trending in the right direction?” It’s easy to fixate and get disappointed with day to day fluxuations. One needs to connect the data points.

12.6 lbs since Jan. 1 ain’t too shabby, girl! I’m rounding it up to 13 & fulfilling my pledge ASAP.An injury has kept me mostly sedentary for a few months but I’m recovered and getting back into exercising myself, & cutting back on meat & carbs – moar veg! Best I can say for now is I haven’t gained the weight I usually have by this time.Going for a brisk walk with friends right as soon as I post this.Still want some glamour shots of the hot new bod, though. :)

I can’t believe it took several hours for anyone to suggest this – it was my first thought :)I’m much more interested in the negative mass regime, though. Negative kinetic energy! And you could quantum tunnel (would be pretty easy for a brief moment there near m=0), have an imaginary velocity, and get a positive kinetic energy again.Okay, explosion of nerdosity over.

Nice graph. I was intrigued by the water-retention part of the graph and googled it and found the most probable cause. I’ll need another event like that for me to confirm my hypothesis to the degree of confidence which I’m comfortable with.*totally intrigued*

Quite a difference! Sounds like you’ve developed a diet/exercise routine you can live with to make & keep that high school weight. Just don’t fall off the wagon too hard!Ain’t easy I know. I’m sure the enforced inactivity and stress of grad school & lab work are a challenge. Like I said in an earlier post, you should have gone into field biology! :)I also vote for updates.

Hey I happen to be on a diet as well, and it didn’t really start revving until I did it this way – 30-50 carbs a day, roughly 1200-13050 calories a day, and a rum & diet coke every other day. Believe it or not, the alcohol is actually kind of an important component… Lowering carbs helps keep away cravings and hunger. I don’t work out, since I already live a pretty active life. I lose about 2 to 3 pounds a week, and I’m almost never tempted to go over either my calories or carbs. Can’t say if it’ll agree with your body chemistry as well, but it’s working great for me.Good luck with your weight loss, either way!

I want the data in tabular form, too. I want to run a multiple regression analysis to verify a hypothesis about the cause of water retention and cross-examine it with other data I can get a hold of online.

I’ll answer anyway. Was hoping it would merely be seen as a light-hearted compliment and a joke about the frequent boob talk here. But I do admit that, after I posted, it occurred to me that it might not come off as intended. Apologies. I assure you that I am not creepy. Have to cop to old, though.I hope the above will be evaluated in the context of my many other posts here which AFAIK, have been appropriate and respectful.

Gah, I just sounded like a politician. To the point: I wished after I posted that there was a “delete” button, and I completely understand your reaction, ng. I’ve been respectful and appropriate in all my previous posts AFAIK on Blag Hag and hope this will be forgiven.

Good job Jen! Do you have a final goal weight? And if you don’t mind telling, what’s your height? (feel free to smack me if these questions are annoying or have been answered before) I lost quite a bit of weight a while back and did it mostly by just cutting out drink calories; I now only drink water and tea. The avg American gets 20% of calories from drinks, even though humans only evolved drinking water. Anyway, wish you continued success and good health.